


fools & monsters

by marzipan (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, Body Swap, Cats, F/F, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Kidlock, M/M, Magic AU, Mermaids, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-07-25 06:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16192427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/marzipan
Summary: collection of mostly unrelated fictober shorts, some spooky some silly





	1. pre-molly/mycroft/jim

The curtains behind her are flung open and Molly Hooper shrieks, having nearly dropped a whole handful of hawthorn berries into the cauldron.

“Jim,” she hisses, craning her head around to be sure he can see that she is (rightfully) angry. His dark hair is a mess - he practically ducks beneath her skirts in his hurry to find cover, before leaning up against the wall beneath the small window that gives a glimpse into the street.

“Is the potion done?” he asks, eyeing the bubbling cauldron. The murky purple glows powder blue for a moment before turning dull again. Molly levels him a look, and very deliberately drops in one, two, three juniper berries, one after another.

“Not even close!” Molly says. “We haven’t tested it, and I can’t have you taking a prototype that could kill you.”

“If we don’t hurry, I’ll be dead anyway,” he says carelessly. “The magistrate has set his bloodhound of a brother after me, and if there’s anyone who can track me down, it’s Sherlock Holmes.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was collusion.” She turns a bright red, but glares at him.

“Maybe you should have thought about it,” she mutters bitterly, “before you started siphoning magic off innocents for your own gain.”

Jim chances a glance at the window, genuinely distressed, before crowding into her space - Molly is nudged aside with a yelp. He looks down at the formula she’s penned into her work book - the ingredients, the methods, and the intended effects.

The parentheses denoting his reversal, the undoing of the spell, is left blank.

Jim darts over to her cabinet of pre-brewed formulations, and grabs a reddish one off the shelf - and dumps the contents into the cauldron.

It roars, turning flame-red for an instant, before settling down to a muted purple.

“Jim!” Molly looks horrified.

“There,” he says, grabbing a quill to write in the last bit of the formula. “‘Sealed with a kiss’ - part of the standard repertoire. You turn me with a kiss, and then you’re the only one who can undo it.”

At Molly’s face aghast, Jim’s easy confidence falters, hand halting as he reaches for a ladle.

“What?”

“That was 'True love’s kiss’!” she cries in dismay. He rolls his eyes.

“Same thing,” he says.

“It isn’t!”

He smirks, then downs a full ladle of the potion.

_**POOF!** _

Smoke erupts where Jim once stood, just as the doors are thrown open. Molly picks up a basket of nettles, upending the whole thing into the cauldron. Within seconds, the potion is ruined to the point of being unrecognizable.

A small black shadow darts out the window, Molly’s only sign that Jim is safe, as she stares down the Hound. Flanked by men in black armor, her old schoolmate steps into her basement laboratory.

All she can do now is lie.

 _I hope you land on your feet, James_ , she thinks.  _You always do._

-

Two months later, Mycroft Holmes calls Molly Hooper into his offices to question her about the Moriarty case.

The investigation had been inconclusive, and though Sherlock Holmes is loath to let a loose thread lie, his brother, Mycroft Holmes, put the case out of the public consciousness.

After all, it wouldn’t do to remind people that there were big, scary criminals out there, left to roam unhindered. It just meant investigations needed to proceed in quiet.

Molly wrings her hands as the doors open for her, not sure what she might find.

She has never met this man that they call the most dangerous man in London.

 _He’s supposed to be a civil servant,_  she thinks.  _Just an administrator of the law!_

 _Oh, but administrators can write down that you are meant to be beheaded,_ she moans to herself.

The room is warmer than she would have thought the furnishings such a coldhearted man would procure. Rich tobacco wood, a fire, and - a furry little black cat purring in the man’s lap.

He catches her staring - staring at the little noisy ball of fluff batting playfully at his hands whenever they come near.

“Oh, Miss Hooper, yes, please do take a seat,” he says with a gesture.

“That cat,” she says, high and breathless, nerves alight.

“Hm? Oh, yes, this little fellow is new.” He looks down with a ridiculously fond expression as he says this, and Molly makes a wide-eyed, nearly comical expression at the cat, whose familiar eyes only blink guilelessly at her, before resuming its nuzzling of its newfound owner.

“He’s adorable,” she croaks. He mews, and she  _swears_  it even  _sounds_  smug. 

That only makes Mycroft smile, and pick up the kitty, holding it to eye-level. It yawns, sticking out its tongue.

“He’s such a sweet thing,” Mycroft says, before giving it a small, quick kiss, intending to drop the feline back on his lap.

Instead, a clap as loud as thunder resounds throughout the room, accompanied by a bloom of smoke.

When Molly is done coughing and fanning the smoke from her face, she can see that James Moriarty is sitting in Mycroft Holmes’s lap, hands braced on his chest, while the man sits as frozen as if he’d been carved from stone.

“Well,” Jim chuckles nervously. “This is awkward.”


	2. kid sherlock & john

Sherlock crawls out from under the dusty dining table, his treasure clutched tightly in his hand. 

“Sherlock?” Mycroft’s  _annoying_  calls carry all the way up to the cluttered attic and Sherlock scowls even though there is no one around to see it.  Footsteps sound, so Sherlock pockets the little bottle, the one with blue liquid and a “drink me” label on the lid, to ensure Mycroft doesn’t confiscate it.

Sherlock runs down the stairs, nearly barreling into Mycroft, who steps aside just in time.

“No running, Sherlock! Not up here, where the wood looks like it’s about to rot through,” Mycroft admonishes.

“It’ll only rot through if you stomp on it too much with your fat self,” Sherlock shoots back. 

“Mummy is looking for you, we’re to greet the neighbors,” Mycroft says, undeterred by the outburst, following him back down.

Sherlock groans dramatically, stomping all the way out.

.

The family is nice enough, though Sherlock isn’t paying much attention. He’s tucked into his mother’s side, hiding behind her skirts, mind filled with thoughts of his mystery bottle.

 _Drink me, drink me, drink me_ , it sings. Sherlock itches to pull it out. What harm could it do?

Maybe lots.

This called for an experiment.

“I’m John Watson,” says the fair-haired boy, breaking Sherlock out from the deep well of his thoughts. 

Sherlock nods, taking a few steps away from the parents, and expecting him to follow.  

“Sherlock, don’t stray too far, and stay out of the woods!” his mother calls after him.

The boy has bright clear eyes, and Sherlock thinks it might be good to have a friend, a conspirator who isn’t  _Mycroft_ , but he doesn’t want to play with him if he is a coward. 

“Do you want to play in the woods?” Sherlock asks. John Watson nods, and throws him a grin, and then they race off.

.

Leaves crunch beneath his feet as the two of them go deep enough the sun only barely filters through the leaves.

_Drink me, drink me, drink me._

John Watson’s fallen a bit behind and Sherlock doesn’t quite care. He’s examining moss on a tree and anyway he can hear the other boy’s crunchy steps.

_Drink me, drink me, drink me._

He hasn’t got his lab here, but Sherlock succumbs to curiosity anyway and pulls the bottle out.

 _Drink me,_ it whispers _._

Mycroft’s voice counters it in his head with a disappointed, holier than though sigh.  _As if anyone could be so stupid as to drink some unknown substance just because the label says._

Sherlock frowns. Mycroft is right (Mycroft is  _always_  right). He should test it (just a  _sniff,_ it won’t hurt). 

 _Drink me, drink me, drink me._  

Sherlock pulls the stopper out of the bottle, eyes intently focused on the liquid, and lifts it. What’s the worst that could happen? Poison? Death? He shouldn’t - but he can’t  _not -_

_PAK!_

Sherlock jerks back; the bottle in his hand smashes into a dozen pieces as a fast-flying rock shatters through it. He whips his head around to see John Watson holding a slingshot.

“Hey Sherlock, look what I found just lying on a rock. ” he says. “The rubber band’s not bad.”


	3. kid Jim

Once upon a time, there was a poor little orphan boy named Jim, and he was adopted by the kindhearted town doctor who already had two daughters.

Irene and Molly were both as beautiful as they were clever, the eldest daughter an artist, and the younger one with an affinity for the sciences.

The three welcomed Jim into their loving home, but he stomped right into the cellar, and refused to bend to their whims.

“Jim, it’ll get cold down there in the basement, and colder yet come winter,” the doctor said, worried. “Please come upstairs to sleep, we’ve got a new feather bed just for you!”

But Jim just scowled and turned to the wall.

“Jim, you’ll get lonely down here all alone,” Molly said, hanging by the wall halfway down the stairs. “At least take this nice warm blanket, if not our company.”

Jim let her leave the blanket, but only made a face at the suggestion that he might be  _lonely_.

“Jim,” Irene said, raising an eyebrow. “I saw you eyeing my boots earlier. I’ll let you try them on if you stop being a twat and just move upstairs.”

But Jim just stuck his tongue out at her, and continued to turn the basement into his personal workshop.

Each time they came to sought out Jim, he’d take the tray of supper, or the blanket, or the new clothes, and then shut the door in their faces. He didn’t need company, he had a plan to build.

Until one day, an invitation to the ball came.

“What ball?” Molly asked, standing on her toes, trying to read over her sister’s arm.

“ _The_ ball,” Irene said, exasperated. “The event of the century! Prince Sherlock Holmes is going to meet the one he is to marry. Oh Molly, I’m going to be a princess!”

“ _You?_  What makes you think it’ll be  _you?_ ” Molly asked.

Jim just rolled his eyes.

“I refuse to go,” he said, and stomped back downstairs, his workshop a reprieve from the girls’ excited chattering.

But that night, the night of the ball, curiosity got the better of Jim. He waited until his sisters and the doctor had left their home and were well on their way, then snuck out to make his way to the palace.

It was no easy task getting past the guards, but Jim had seen the palace before, and he knew its layout. He planned to go in through the library windows, then find his way toward the main ballroom to sneak a glance at the prince.

He crept toward the smaller, unguarded windows, and picked at the lock.

But as he swung open the window - the one beside him opened too.

Jim froze, caught with one leg through the entrance, and stared at his witness.

It was another teen, of similar age, caught with one foot out the window, trying to exit the castle.

It is a long, tense stalemate.

“Well,” Jim started.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” the other boy said quickly.

“Deal,” Jim said.

They both nodded, and continued their respective ways.

 _The prince doesn’t look so special after all,_  he thought as he landed down inside the study.


	4. Anthea, Irene

Anthea tosses the coin, catches it again. She flips it onto the back of her hand by reflex, but she doesn’t bother looking.

It doesn’t matter which side it’s landed on.

What matters is the two doors that now appear before her, buzzing into tangible form right before her eyes when just a second ago there was nothing.

Right or left?

It’s not like the coin has ever helped her make the right choice. Anthea has been floating untethered throughout the multiverse, and she needs to get back to her own world.

She picks a door at random and steps through it, bracing herself for whatever may come. The circumstances under which she was thrown halfway (for all she knew) across the universe (multiverse? she wasn’t a time-space theorist, she was a special operative) were far from calm.

She’d, in effect, taken a bullet for her boss, except it wasn’t a bullet, it was a version of this coin she now held, blasting her through time and space. He’d only in the nick of time managed to hand her this prototype - what he’d meant to guard with his life. Instead, it cost hers.

It’s not home, it’s a strip mall.

She flips again. Picks a door at random.

She is so tired.

She has seen 1,082 worlds.

It’s an airport this time, and Anthea takes a seat. A bevy of large metal birds wait on the taxi to - Asia, it seems.

Movement from her 2 o’clock catches her eye, and she looks to see a redhead in sunglasses watching her.

The woman looks familiar. Ah,  _The_ Woman.

Adler raises an eyebrow. Anthea’s too tired for quips or pretending she hasn’t seen what she’s seen.

“I’m here by accident,” she explains. No sense in getting her hackles up thinking the Government is here to bring her back in. Adler visibly relaxes.

“What’s your excuse?” Anthea asks. She truly hadn’t known Adler’s whereabouts. Hadn’t know she was still  _alive_. Clearly, this was why. And likely because of the younger Holmes, too.

The woman shrugs.

“They were going to find me no matter where on earth I hid. So I had to move to a different earth entirely,” she says. Anthea doesn’t miss the way she eyes the coin. Perhaps she’s homesick too. 

“He just handed it to you?” she asks.

“Not  _just_ ,” Anthea snipes. It’s been a long day. And Mycroft Holmes didn’t  _just_  do anything. 

She doesn’t have to voice that second part; Adler can read in her face she’s bitter, and that makes her laugh - a snort that makes her shoulders shake, nothing delicate or coy about it.

“Please, darling. You’ve got the keys to the universe in your hands, and your plan is to cater to a man?” 

 _You know what,_  Anthea thinks, as one of the planes takes off.  _She’s not wrong._


	5. Mycroft/Jim

Mycroft drops his wrist, moves his hand to Jim’s tie, and just cocks his head in a way that says, oh, I have plans for you.

Jim sits heavily in the armchair, staring off into the distance from just a few feet from Mycroft. If Mycroft had been anyone else, he would have suspected losing his mind, thinking that the piece of furniture had steadily inched closer and closer to his desk while he was not around, over the past few days.

But no, Jim is exactly so conniving in the pettiest of ways.

He keeps it up for several more moments, waiting as Mycroft works (as Mycroft ignores him), before finally stomping off.

Mycroft looks up after his exiting figure and the door left open. Nervous, then, he notes.

The first few days he’d stayed and talked, before darting off. Or slinking away, in defeat, a few days.

The next night he sighs noisily, and Mycroft decides to finally address his presence.

“Are you bored, Mr. Moriarty?” Jim glares at him as soon as he gets formal. He looks to the door, looks almost petulant, then all but whines, “If you didn’t want to do this, you could have just  _said so_.”

“Hm,” Mycroft says, looking at his files, not the man in the chair. Actually, they’re the same ones as yesterday, but Jim’s too bothered to notice. That in itself is interesting enough, Mycroft thinks, setting the file down when Jim runs off this time.

-

Jim startles when he finds Mycroft’s caught up to him - he hadn’t expected him to follow.

The man corners him, quite literally, at the end of the hall, making full use of the height he’s got on Jim. He looms - not angry, not cold, just curious.

“Well,” Mycroft says, almost bored. “Let’s see what you’ve taken.”

“What?” Jim’s eyebrows pinch together. Mycroft rolls his eyes.

“Do you really expect me to believe that finding you in my study was mere coincidence, two coworkers passing each other on the tube, maybe? Please, your hand.”

He’s already taken his hand, there’s nothing in it. Mycroft’s thumb pries his fingers open, before sliding down his palm, down his wrist. Jim wants to squirm; instead he tenses, and forces himself not to retreat back further into the corner.

Mycroft notices, of course; he pins him in place, thigh between his legs, hand beside his head, and leans in.

“Ah, yes,” Mycroft says, soft, mocking, and close to his ear. “Pretend you don’t want it. Pretend you’ve not been causing a nuisance all day, absolutely wanton with need.

His heartbeat thunders in his ears and Jim wants to laugh, madly. He’d nearly forgotten he had one.

Oh he’s always understood why people did this - watch films about things that go bump in the night; why people  _hunt_ , sometimes things twice their size; why they spent so much time building giant roller coasters and haunted houses.

“Alright, enough,” he growls, pushing steel in his voice, shoving the man off ineffectually.

Mycroft drops his wrist, moves his hand to Jim’s tie, and just cocks his head in a way that says,  _oh, I have plans for you._


	6. Mycroft & Lestrade

“So you…don’t need rescuing?”

Greg Lestrade looks around the tower - and it  _is_  a tower. It’s just that it’s been. Renovated.

It’d taken him a long time to get to this tower, it had. Though the bustling village surrounding the damn thing probably should have tipped him off that it wasn’t as, erm, oppressive? a structure as he had first been led to believe.

The man sitting before him, seated behind a grand wooden desk, of all things, certainly doesn’t look like he needs rescuing. He looks some years younger than Lestrade himself, and he’s dressed in the sort of suit that looks like it cost all of Lestrade’s yearly wages.

He steeples his hands together in a familiar gesture and peers at Lestrade with his icy blue eyes, as if seeing through him completely - again, familiar.

“Well,” he says. “As the story goes, a woman from the village over was pregnant one winter and had a hankering for rapunzel lettuce. The only person within the vicinity growing rapunzel was a witch, and offered her the produce in exchange for her first born.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And that first born is me,” he says, just a tad dry. “Mycroft Holmes, a pleasure to meet you.”

“So you’re…not being held against your will?” Lestrade asks.

Mycroft smiles like Lestrade has just asked something very silly.

“I have been running this tower since I was eight, and as you can see from the town surrounding us, our economy has flourished. The witch has since been able to retire early, having no need for kidnapping small children in the hopes of bringing them up to contribute manual labor - a poor business model, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, um, I can see that.”

“And, pray tell, how did you find us? Our tourism campaign hasn’t even launched yet.”

“Oh no, not here for…tourism. I’m questing,” Lestrade explains, interrupted by Mycroft’s skeptical look. He pushes on.

“A wizard - with dark hair, and a billowing cloak - sent me here, saying there was a witch that kidnapped a child many years ago, and that the child - now grown, now you, I suppose - needed rescuing.”

A knowing, exasperated expression settles on Mycroft’s face.

“Ah yes, the wizard. His name is Sherlock,” Mycroft says.

“You know him?” Lestrade asks in surprise.

“Yes, he is my younger brother. He visits once a year, and we bicker.”

“Um.” Lestrade scratches at his temple. Family nonsense then; he knew it well. “I guess I’ll be on my way then.”

Mycroft looks at him, head tilted, eyes bright with curious interest.

“Stay a while, Mr. Lestrade,” he says. Then he smiles. “At least let me give you the grand tour.”


	7. Sherlock, Mary

Sherlock pushes himself to his feet, cursing the night sky above him, and himself for having lost consciouness, as if he had willingly succumbed to the darkness rather than suffered a blow to the head.

The moon takes pity on him, casting shadows this way and that.

More importantly - he feels for the end of his cloak. With its jagged edges, they would not have known. No, they wouldn’t haven even known to suspect.

He gingerly takes one step, and then another, hand on the wall to steady himself as he wills his mind not to swim.

It shouldn’t be easy to find his way out of this labyrinth, not really. It’s made to be imprenetrable, and they must have dropped him off deep into the maze. Likely, anyway.

But Sherlock has one trick left, and he knows how to find his way out.

He’s turned two corners and is about to turn again when he hears a preternatural rumble, something so low it sounds like it’s escaped from the jaws of hell - he stills, and as he turns minutely to see if there are shadows cast over his shoulder, he hears a slither.

One beast? Or two?

Sherlock knows the maze contains a beast. Everyone knows it. Nannies tell children, to frighten them into behaving.

He sets one foot down slowly - slowly - a snarl.

Moonlight is obscured as something surges behind him, and Sherlock bolts. He sprints toward whichever path opens before him first - think now of avoid the creature, and for a way out later. There’s no point in solving the puzzle if you are dead.

A unearthly shriek pierces through the night, stopping Sherlock cold.

Then a wet thud.

Somehow, in the still silence that follows, Sherlock is more terrified than he has ever been.

Footsteps approach quickly - human, or belonging to something close enough to be. Small enough to be. Sherlock whips around, bracing himself, ready to fight with his fists if need be.

It’s a small, blonde woman.

“Are you alright?” She looks at him with big, round eyes.

He hesitates, then he nods.

“Right,” he says, getting back into the zone. He nods to himself, unaware he is bouncing on the balls of his feet. There is a mission here, and it is to get out of the maze without waking the Beast.

“I know how to get out,” he tells her, as a way of thanks. It is better than an expression of gratitude, and he can see she knows it too. Results, in the end, define all else.

Her eyes brighten at the prospect.

“My cloak is lined with spider silk,” he explains. “Thin enough it’s gone undetected, sturdy enough it’s left a trail since I was attacked, a trail that leads back to the entrance from where I was brought in.”

They walk together, and he can see from her dusty clothes that she has been left here as prisoner as well. Perhaps they are meant to be a meal for the rumored Beast.

With her sword and his thread to the outside world, they are sure to make it out again.

“They say no one left here ever sees daylight again,” the woman says with a bitter laugh. “They’re wrong.”

He eyes her, afraid to ask her crime.

“You know how this whole Beast story came about?” she asks, when the walk stretches on into a period of calm. Even the night sky looks at peace once again, and the shadows calming rather than ominous.

“I’ve heard the nursery tales,” he says.

“Well around the barracks they say it was lured in,” she tells him conspiratorially. “This maze was built above a crypt, you know, built on cursed land. Over time, the curse took form, and they needed another way to keep it contained. They thought the Beast could battle the curse.”

Sherlock looks skeptical.

“That makes no sense.”

She just shrugs.

A bird twitters from overhead, and Sherlock cranes his head back. He feels at the threads stemming from his cloak - a pile of it, enough to form a ball of string now, sits in his hand.

“We’ve made it,” he whispers, triumphant.

Their steps quicken as they see the opening at the end of the path.

“Do you know what happened to the Beast, once it encountered the curse?” she asks as they reach the door.

“What?”

She steps beyond the threshold, seeming to glow as she basks in her newfound freedom. He’s transfixed for a moment, and then she turns to him, looking straight into his eyes.

“It lost,” she says, and something cold pierces his heart.

He looks down to see the hilt of her sword protruding from his chest,

and then

it

all goes

dark.


	8. Molly/Sherlock

Sherlock hears music by the sea, sometimes.

After the “incident” last summer (he tried to drown himself, he’s not afraid to say it. but mother is) he’s been forbidden to go back onto the beach, forbidden to climb past the jagged rocks, forbidden to even venture up the grassy hill that led to the cliff.

He’s tried. He was stopped. And Mycroft always seems to know when he’s plotting.

He feels like a prisoner in this sunny, whitewashed summer estate. He  _is_  a prisoner. So he stops speaking.

He still plays, though. 

The violin is voice enough, Sherlock thinks, as he plays by the window toward the sea. He can say everything he wants with four strings and a bow, and sometimes, when he needs it the most, the sea sings back to him.

.

Molly hears music from inland, sometimes.

It’s comforting, her personal islet in the lonely sea of existence. She has sisters many, but each reeks of death, and have nothing to say to each other. They didn’t have names, but she picked this one out of a fallen book, because she liked it. She liked the one reading it. 

They don’t even like each other, not like the characters in the stories did, even the very notion is foreign. The characters loved and raged and laughed and wept, all of it was foreign. Molly wants, but no one understands. 

But the music - it reminds her of the boy from summer. 

He read on the rocks, sometimes. He went foraging for squirming creatures and stones, sometimes. 

He ventured farther and farther out into the sea, even when she didn’t sing, and she liked to dream, liked to imagine that, perhaps, it was to meet her. 

Sometimes she hears music, plucked and bowed strings becoming vivid colors painting loneliness, desperation, exalting life, seeking death. It blows in from over the cliff, and she sings back to it.


	9. Mary

 

Rosamund trudges up the snowy path. The bitterly icy winds slice across her cheeks, but the pain is dull beneath her rage at her father.

She’s the oldest of three; there was no way anyone but her could go.

It was her fault, anyway. Her  _stupid_  father tried to steal her a rose from the mansion’s unruly thorn garden. Everyone  _knew_  you avoided the Beast, but  _everyone_  apparently did not include her dimwitted father. She hated her name. 

So when the Beast asked, “What is your name?”

She said, “Mary.”

Her mother’s name. She always prayed she’d turn out to be more like her mother than her father.

“I’ll show you to your rooms.”

She’s not expected to cook or clean or anything else at all, despite the house being enormous---big enough to fit their small home in it a hundred times over and then some. 

She supposes the lack of  _anything_  to do is hell itself.

He, the Beast, points down a dark hall.

“The West Wing,” he says. “You are never to set foot in there.”

Mary nods.

There’s a challenge, if she ever heard one.


	10. Jim/Molly

 

Jim circles the ship, fins gliding through the water dark as midnight ink, and waits. She comes out on the deck every night, and she reads.

He loves hearing her voice, hearing her struggle her way through medical texts she’s stolen away, arguing with dead authors and getting excited over their discoveries.

She’s an optimistic one - so unlike the pragmatic, practical life of the sea. For all the songs and poems written to it, there is nothing romantic about this great body of water, Jim thinks.

They’ve been sailing now for three nights, and it is the first time he has heard her truly sad.

She’s sobbing.

She’s not ready to be married, and as they near land it’s become an inevitable end she can’t not face. But she would rather die than see her father’s kingdom fall to pieces because they couldn’t secure the alliance.

“Come,” he says, breaking her trance of depression. She falls silent at his voice, but not for long.

“Hello?” she calls out into the darkness.

A splash, and then he flips tail over head and comes closer, his head out of the water down to his shoulders.

He holds out his hand; his eyes glitter in the dark.

She takes one step, then another, and reaches for his hand.

One step, and then another - into the water, into his arms, into the sea. Floating, dreaming, drowning.


	11. Molly, Eurus, cats

Eurus looks down at Molly’s lap. She’s been living with this girl for two months now, and sure there were signs at the beginning, but this is it. She’s snapped. This girl is losing it.

"Did Lestrade…multiply?” Eurus asks.

Molly wails, covering her face with her hands. She continues babbling unintelligibly but Eurus makes out “met a nice girl” and “didn’t mean to” and “I can’t” and "who could’ve known this would happen"?

“You could, Molly, _you_ should have known this was going to happen,” Eurus says, eyes boring into Molly’s. She’s grabbed her wrists so as to force Molly to make eye contact. Her mascara is runny and smeared. Gross. “You should have gotten him neutered when you first brought him home.”

“He’s not actually my cat!” Molly cries out. Eurus understands the despair. Lestrade was something of the building’s friendly inspector, making the rounds floor by floor.

He somehow always knew when Molly was especially stressed about finals, and came in for a cuddle.

Except now Lestrade had “met a nice girl” and had kittens.

He was meowing up a storm this morning, and Molly, the softhearted fool she was, ran out after him just as he’d meant for her to do. And then Molly came home with a _cardboard box_.

Molly’s sniffles die down to a minimum.

“This is Purrlock Holmes,” she says, pointing to the black fuzzball on her lap. Eurus gasps.

“This is Catson.” She points to the fairest of the bunch. “Meowiarty.”

“No! No, don’t name them!”

“Meowcroft, and Toby.”

“You’ll never get rid of them if you name them!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eurus waves her hand slowly in front of the black cat. Now, she doesn’t know much about cats (her family had a dog but he died before she was even a toddler, but that’s beside the point). She’s never lived with a cat, much less five, but this one’s being a little weirdo.
> 
> “Molly? I think the black one is malfunctioning,” she calls out toward the bathroom, where Molly’s putting her hair in a towel.
> 
> She hurries out and her expression turns to relief when she sees what Eurus means. The cat is making a strange, dazed face with its eyes wide and unblinking, it’s mouth slightly agape, and it has just been sitting there still as a statue for a long time now.
> 
> Molly laughs.
> 
> “What?” Eurus asks. “What is he doing?”
> 
> “Aww, Purrlock Holmea is in his mind palace.”
> 
> “His what now.”
> 
> .
> 
> “MOLLY!”
> 
> Eurus has barely set foot into the kitchen when the ginger one jumps down from who knows where, sitting on her foot and screaming.
> 
> She’s already learned that the sound of any food related appliances is likely to attract at least one of these puffballs and they get awfully climby when they realize food is around. But she hasn’t even gone near food this time! How did the little bastard know she was going to make a tuna sandwich?
> 
> “Molly!” she hollers again. “Your cat is screaming at me!”
> 
> Molly walks into the room and gets all gooey.
> 
> “Aww, is Meowcroft hungry? Meowcroft says it’s lunchtime.”
> 
> “Stop,” Eurus says, disgusted. “He is going to get fat. So fat.”
> 
> .
> 
> Meowiarty is the worst one. Sometimes, Eurus will be minding her own business, and then SURPRISE! Fuzzy little bastard will fling himself out of the pabtry or down from the top of a door to land on her and send her into a screaming fit. Sometimes he sits on her chest while she sleeps and she wakes in the middle of the night to two bright eyes staring.
> 
> She glares at him from across the kitchen table. He’s eyeing her milk and cereal, and she’s too fed up to escape with it. This is her flat, and she’s not going to get bossed around by some pint sized furball.
> 
> He leaps.
> 
> “MOLLY.”
> 
> \---
> 
> She ends up having to give them up for adoption. Purrlock Holmes goes to an aspiring rapper named Shezza. The doctor from 5A and his wife take in Catson. Jim from the coffee shop adopts Meowiarty. A professor named Michael answers the ad online and takes Meowcroft while muttering under his breath about changing his name. Molly convinces Eurus they should keep Toby  
> @timetraveler-artist-writer did art!  
> https://timetraveler-artist-writer.tumblr.com/post/178785917595/marcceh-timetraveler-artist-writer#notes


	12. sherlock/lestrade

_Come immediately. SH_

Greg Lestrade frowned at his phone. He’d learned better now.

What’s up? he texted back.

_Come immediately!!! SH._

Oh yay, added punctuation by way of explanation. Greg didn’t know what he was expecting.

.

Armed with  _absolutely_ no knowledge of what was going on, Greg showed up at 221B with his weapon in hand and Donovan on call. 

He knocked twice.

“Sherlock?”

Complete silence.

Greg tensed, the hair on the back of his neck rising. 221B was rarely  _quiet,_ much less eerily silent. And something about the whole thing just felt…off.

Greg tried the door—unlocked. He turned the knob, planning to enter one slow step at a time, but the moment he passed the threshold something  _slammed_  him into the wall. 

It was  _Sherlock_ , who’d now stuck his nose into the crook of Greg’s neck, breathing him in like some sort of- of-

“Sherlock, are you  _high_?” Greg growled out. An emergency warranting three exclamation marks indeed, but what in the world happened  _now_  that caused Sherlock to do- this- to himself. Again. 

He looked up, and the red, glowing eyes interrupted Greg’s heart plummeting.

 _Shit_.

“Sherlock,” Greg said slowly. “What the  _fuck_  are you on?”

“O negative,” Sherlock rattled on, ignoring him. “I remembered correctly after all. John is B, Molly is AB, and she had a sample of A that I don’t think she will mind missing.”

Greg grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to peer into his eyes again. What the bloody hell was that, a trick of the light?

“Now,” Sherlock said, shaking his hands off. “If you don’t mind, I need to complete the experiment.”

“What experi-  **OW.** ”

He bit him. 

He  _bit_  him. Sherlock Holmes just fucking bit him in the neck and- oh- woozy. But a good sort of woozy. A bit floaty and-

.

Greg blinks slowly, eyes acclimating to the light again. He must have passed out, because he’s not in Sherlock’s chair and he wasn’t a moment ago and-  _whatthehell_  Sherlock was in the chair as well.

Greg jumped to his feet up from his lap, leaving a scowling Sherlock bereft of cuddles. 

John-  _John, where had_ ** _he_  ** _been -_ snorted.

“Did-” Greg tried, looking back and forth.

“Yep,” John said.

“Wha-?”

“He’s a vampire,” John said.

“I now take blood as sustenance,” Sherlock shot back. “It doesn’t mean I’m a vampire. I don’t burn to a crisp in the sun, I’m not allergic to gar-”

“You’ve got pointy teeth, you drink blood, vampire,” John said. 

“Did he-  did he do this to you too?” Greg asked before they could get into it again, pointing to his neck. There were tiny puncture wounds, but nothing serious, from what he could feel. On instinct, he grabbed his phone and took a few photos. For evidence.

John gave him a funny look, and then he reached for the sleeve of his jumped and Greg saw why. There was a bandaid and a bruise indicating a sterile needle that’d been there to pull a bit of blood.

Greg slowly turned around to level Sherlock with a look.

Sherlock shrunk in his seat a bit.

“I needed to test all blood types,” he said.

Greg raised an eyebrow.

“You used a needle,” he said.

John held up his newspaper, but it didn’t take a detective to deduce he was grinning underneath it.

“I might have,” Sherlock said sulkily, eyes averted.

Greg pointed to his neck. “Really???”


	13. mycroft/jim, somewhat of a prequel to ch5

Jim sort of just flops over on top of him, starved for touch as he often is, after. 

A short while later, he stills, and Mycroft can tell he’s working up the nerve to ask something.

He shifts in a deliberately uncomfortable (for Mycroft) way. “D’you ever think of forcing yourself on me?” Jim says nonchalantly. 

When Mycroft doesn’t answer, he drags himself up so they can be eye-level. Mycroft continues to stroke his hand, back and forth, across Jim’s arm.

“Well?” Jim asks.

“Well I am  _now_ ,” Mycroft says, considering it. Considering how it would go. 

Jim’s eyes brighten, but then he hesitates. 

Mycroft still finds he doesn’t understand Jim sometimes - how he can be so brazen but at the same time have such difficulty asking for things. Not that he feels comfortable pushing for a straight answer either.

His expression is questioning anyway.

Jim rolls his eyes and pushes himself off, waving his hand in a signature dramatic gesture. “Why do any of us seek out fear and danger? To confront our own mortality, surely?” he saves the question off, flippant again. 

He moves to leave, giving Mycroft a questioning look when he doesn’t let go of his arm. Mycroft tugs him back in response, and Jim falls easily back into bed. 


	14. sherlock & lestrade

Greg Lestrade jolted awake and spent the next few seconds disoriented, grasping for the day, the time, the where and the how and the why - 

 

He came back to himself and realized the ruckus was coming from his front door; it sounded like it’d been kicked in. No footsteps, though - had no one yet entered? From the careless brute force used on the door, it seemed unlikely they’d bother with stealth to rifle through his home.

 

He lived in a small flat filled with cardboard boxes still half unpacked - not much worth stealing. Unusual choice of targets, really.

 

What’d happened earlier yesterday? Wife murdered, blubbering husband with his hands covered in blood in the kitchen; textbook crime of passion. Then he’d, on his way back, ended up arresting a junkie who’d looked like he’d crawled up from a gutter at the scent of a crime scene. 

 

Oh he’d put up a fight - knocked out two officers. Then they got him in a cell, and for a while he kept throwing himself at the bars, before curling up into the corner.  Greg had tried to talk to him, to get some sort of contact as he’d been mumbling about a brother. 

 

Greg crept toward the living room slowly, armed, and saw that it was clear - and that the front door was indeed off its hinges. Clean, actually. Maybe not kicked in after all.

 

“Can I come in?” a deep voice rang from the hallway. 

 

Greg started, standing up straight. He set down his weapon and switched on the light. 

 

The boy - practically a boy still, though just a smidge taller than Greg - in the hallway squinted and scowled.

 

“Your brother put up bail then?” Greg asked. 

 

The junkie he’d arrested looked so affronted it was nearly comical. The situation wasn’t, though.

 

“And what, you’ve come to tell the arresting officer what’s what?” Greg sighed. “Go home, kid, and I won’t press charges.”

 

“Sherlock.”

 

“What?”

 

“My name. Sherlock Holmes. As the arresting officer, you should  _ know that _ ,” he said bristling. Then he sniffed. “And your security is appalling.”

 

Greg’s jaw dropped.

 

“My secu- you just kicked in  my door! Who do you think is going to pay for this?”

 

Sherlock glared. 

 

“I only undid its hinges, and then it fell right in. Can I come inside, now?” he asked. “I have updates about your case.”

 

He sure drew some weird moral lines, Greg thought.

 

“Wait, what  _ case _ ?”

 

“The man you arrested, the husband. It wasn’t murder, it was manslaughter.”

 

Greg groaned. 

 

“I have  _ proof _ ,” he hissed. 

 

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Greg said, rubbing his face. What harm could he do, right? Just some trust fund kid bored out of his mind and-

 

“WHOA! WHOA, whoa what the FUCK do you think you’re doing?” Greg yelled, voice going high in a shriek near the end. Quick as anything, Sherlock had latched onto him, arms around him, face pressed closed into his neck.

 

Greg pulled back, and then he saw  _ fangs _ \- 

 

He shoved Sherlock off.

 

“What the FUCK is that?”

 

“Sorry.” Sherlock sat down heavily in the center of the room, right there on the ground, head hanging so all Greg could see was a mop of black curls. “I’m hungry and you smell good. I’ve been trying to stop, as an experiment, you see. To see how long I can go. But then I smelled your murder case from an entire block away, couldn’t drag myself away if I tried. More interesting, though, I smelled Bio2 Pharmaceuticals.”

 

“Bio2? That big drug company making medicine affordable again?”

 

Sherlock scowled. “They’ve been mixing in experimental drugs with the general fare; it’s how they’re cutting back on R&D costs. Husband’s a diabetic, takes insulin, doesn’t know he’s been taking counterfeit, went  _ nuts.” _

 

Greg stared. There was a vampire in his flat. A vampire conspiracy theorist who fancied himself a detective. There was so much to address.

 

“Where’s the proof?” he asked, pragmatic as ever.

 

Sherlock looked away.

 

“ _ Oi _ , you said you had  _ proof _ .”

 

“You wouldn’t have let me in otherwise,” Sherlock mumbled.

 

“Damn  _ right _ I wouldn’t have. Jesus.” Greg sat heavily on his beat up sofa set up against the wall. 

 

Sherlock peeked up at him through his eyelashes. 

 

“Just one tiny taste?”

 

“What? Oh. No!”


	15. mollcroftiarty - it's a thing

Jim lowers his hands to his chest, and squishes his boobs. Well, Molly’s. But his now, physically, in the sense that they were attached to the body he was currently inhabiting.

He looks up.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jim-as-Molly asks.

Mycroft nods, eyes narrowed at Jim’s continued fondling.

“I suppose you must be Jim then,” he says, voice a bit too hesitant to be Mycroft.

Jim-as-Molly quirks an eyebrow as he continues to fondle.

“Molly?” he asks.

Molly-as-Mycroft nods.

“Not just me then,” Jim-as-Molly hums.

“No,” Molly-as-Mycroft responds drily. “If you’ve gone into my body, physics dictates I’ve got to go somewhere else as well.”

She brightens at that.

“Hey!” Molly-as-Mycroft says.

“That sounded a bit like Mycroft, didn’t it?” she asks, sounding not at all like Mycroft now. “The dry, sarcastic clipped tone of it all.”

Jim-as-Molly bats his eyelashes at her. “Very posh,” he agrees.

About two feet away in the massive bed they shared, Mycroft-as-Jim just looked on with an expression of mildly offended horror.

“Stop that,” he chokes out, a very Mycroft-like expression on Jim’s face.

Jim-as-Molly narrows their eyes. Molly-as-Mycroft snorts with laughter.

“Your face,” she says, voice mirthful and indulgent.

“Ooh, experiment,” Jim-as-Molly suddenly says, grabbing Molly-as-Mycroft’s hands and putting them on Molly’s chest. Molly (as Mycroft) squeezes.

“Oh it’s different when you do it.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Guys,” Mycroft-as-Jim whines. “Stop fondling each other’s bits! We’ve got to reverse this - whatever this is. I have tea with the Queen this afternoon!”

Molly-as-Mycroft pulls her hands back, clapping them together.

“I get to have tea with the Queen!”

“No!”

“Oh, what should I wear?” she asks Jim-as-Molly, sending Mycroft-as-Jim into a fit.

“Guys,” Jim-as-Molly raises his voice. “GUYS. I think we’re forgetting what’s important here.”

They stare.

“The fondling bits part, we just skipped over that.”

“Jim!” Mycroft-as-Jim wails.

“Ooh it’s weird seeing you say that,” Jim-as-Molly remarks, eyes wide as he shucks off her sleep shirt.

Molly-as-Mycroft pulls her, him, into her lap curiously, as Jim-as-Molly reaches for his cock. He stops.

“Is this weird for you?”

Molly-as-Mycroft looks down.

“Oh dear, I’ve got a cock,” she says, genuine marvel devolving quickly into giggles. Jim-as-Molly giggles too, resuming his fondling.

“I think it likes you,” Molly-as-Mycroft says, bracing her hands under Jim-as-Molly as she flips them over, Jim spreading her legs as she does.

Mycroft-as-Jim makes a sort of strangled sound, and Jim-as-Molly’s breath catches as Mycroft moves lower, kissing a spot on technically Molly’s inner thigh he made a note to pay more attention to in future performances.

“You’re next, honey,” Jim-as-Molly says, all exhales. “But let me have this first.”


	16. molly/mycroft

Molly smiles at him, and he sniffles.

Mycroft looks down at the tray she’s pushed beneath his nose, and gives her a grimace-smile. The green goop, a sort of soup of pureed vegetables, tastes about as good as it looks, and accounting for his congestion, that’s saying a lot.

“Sorry to be like this,” he says, nose red and eyes runny.

“Oh, not at all,” she rushes to say. “He’s your brother, this is important.”

Mycroft nods, head swimming.

“You haven’t heard…?”

Molly shakes her head. Not since two weeks ago when he dropped by her flat before departing for Prague, then.

The two of them kept touch to aid Sherlock from afar - they were the only ones who could, and, with what Sherlock was facing, he needed all the aid he could get.

Mycroft jerks back with a start, having nearly nodded off into his soup. Molly catches the tray in time, easing it out of his hands and setting it on the nightstand, before coming back with a wet towel to dab at his face.

Mycroft detests looking so vulnerable, much less in front of a near stranger.

He reaches for his phone, wondering why he hadn’t done this sooner. Why? How did he wait until it got like his head was filled with cotton balls and-?

Molly picked up his phone, and pocketed it.

“You need your rest,” she says, brushing his hair back.

It’s the last thing he sees, her face, before the world upends itself and he finds himself in the land of dreams.

Mycroft blinks, the dust-blue darkness of his room letting him know it’s late evening, and that he’s drifted off. His arm is asleep. Good god, he’s embarrassed. He only hopes Ms. Hooper left quickly.

“Mycroft.” If he didn’t feel so weak he might have jumped out of bed at that. Molly Hooper is sitting by his bedside, a comfortable armchair moved close to create a little reading nook for her as she caught up on things on her phone and - had she been recording him?

Molly smiles.

“Are you feeling better?”

He’s not - he’s really not. He hasn’t felt so ill since he was six and had the flu, and suddenly it dawns on him.

“You drugged me,” he croaks out. His fingertips feel raw, his hands swollen and unwieldy.

Her sweet, guileless smile drops. She seems genuinely angry for a moment, before it melts back into a somewhat sheepish look. Too late, the illusion’s broken.

“Oh, well, I thought I had a bit longer until you figured it out. No matter,” she says, tucking him back in. “You’re mine like this for another forty hours or so, during which you will need to eat and drink again, which puts you at my mercy.”

Mycroft stares at her in horror.

“Don’t worry, Sherlock is fine. He’s still using my flat near weekly and hasn’t missed a single check-in. I’ve never really gotten a chance to get close to you, what with Sherlock always in the way. And now that he’s out of the country half the time, it’s perfect for us, isn’t it?”


End file.
